A client I've been working with recently hired me to shoot a campaign they were working on for a small clothing brand. They wanted to feature on-camera talent wearing the brand's clothing in front of multiple solid color backgrounds. We didn't have the budget or the time to build out multiple sets in different colors, so our best option was to use one lighting setup and multiple colors of seamless paper backdrops.
Over the years I've shot a ton of talking head projects and normally our only requirements are making sure the room looks somewhat decent and is big enough for our equipment, crew, and talent. Recently I started using Savage Seamless Background Paper to try and improve our production value and it's been a great experience. It does take a bit more time and effort to get everything set up given the additional space and stands necessary. It can also be a hot mess to transport those wider paper rolls if you don't have a larger vehicle or box truck. Once you figure that nonsense out, the improved look can certainly be worth the effort if it's in line with the creative direction.
Talking heads are pretty simple. More often than not they're locked-off shot(s) and the on-camera talent is sitting and not moving around. For this project though, the client wanted the talent to be moving around and for us to capture a mix of close-ups, mediums, and full-body shots.
We had the budget to rent out a larger studio space here in the Oklahoma City area. The additional space gave us plenty of room to unroll enough paper for our head-to-toe shots. The space also had enough power for the larger fixtures we needed to evenly light our bigger setups.
The goal was to keep the shadows super soft, so for our key light we made a book light with one of the studio's 5k fixtures bounced into a 6x6' ultra bounce and back through a 6x6' silk. For the backlight, we pushed a single 4' Fourbank Kinoflo through a 48" diffusion frame. The larger light sources gave the talent plenty of room to move around while still maintaining a consistent look. We also used a large black solid opposite the key and a double net at times to help sculpt the lighting. We shot another look during the first half of the day using the studio's large white cyc wall, but we can talk about that some other time. Sidenote: my life is forever changed after using wheeled combo stands for the first time. Those things are magic.
Knowing how well they'd worked for me in the past, we used those Savage Seamless Paper Backdrops and the client picked out four colors: blue, yellow, pink, and red. The final delivery would be a 16x9 format, so we used the 107" wide backdrop. Savage does have a 140" option, but we weren't able to get that for our shoot.
The paper backdrops we were using were wide enough to fill out the background of our close-up and medium shots, but the full-body-length shots would need a bit of work in post. Depending on the edit, the paper backdrop edges would need to be digitally extended to fill out the 16x9 frame. As long as the on-camera talent didn't go past the edge of the paper, they'd be fine.
In the end, we were happy with our footage. The client didn't want to deal with a ton of post-work so we shot the full sensor 4k ProRes on my RED Weapon and baked in the the RedGamma 4 / Dragon Color 2 look. You're a bit limited with the framerates in using the 4k ProRes option on the RED Weapon, but we were able to get what we needed and the client didn't have to deal with the much larger raw 8k .R3D files.
CLIENT: Red Moxie Media
DIRECTOR: Tanya Martineau
AC: John Dewberry
